28 June 2026 • Trinity 4 • Luke 6:36–42
“Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.” (Luke 6:39–40)
In the holy Name of + Jesus. Amen.
You have been somebody’s disciple since the day you were born. You entered a school you never chose, and you have never once graduated from it. You learned to talk like someone. You learned to laugh like someone, to hold a grudge like someone, to size up a stranger before he opens his mouth like someone.
No one teaches himself. We are all copies of a copy. Sons of Adam. And Jesus says it plainly today: a disciple is not above his teacher. You will not rise higher than the one who trained you. Given enough time, you will simply become him.
So who has been teaching you? Who taught you to keep score? Who taught you to measure out your kindness with a thimble and then expect it back by the bucket? Who taught you to forgive slowly, if at all, and to remember a wrong the way you can’t seem to remember anything else?
The world is a patient, blind teacher. It has been training you your whole life to judge first and ask no questions. And Jesus asks the only question that matters about a teacher like that: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch?” (Luke 6:39)
But the trouble is not only that we follow blind guides. The trouble is that we are blind guides. We walk around with a plank in our own eye and reach for the speck in a brother’s. “First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.” (Luke 6:42) Repent.
And while you are blind, you are still teaching. Parents, your children are watching you, and they are not becoming what you say they should be. They are becoming what you are. Mercy runs downhill from teacher to disciple, and so does its absence. You reproduce what you are. If your heart is a courtroom, you will raise a houseful of little prosecutors. Like begets like.
And do not tell yourself the dust motes you root out in the corners of your eyes are the small ones. The same Law that damns the murderer also damns the man who keeps a quiet ledger of his neighbor’s faults, for “whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). That’s no bit of crustiness, that’s a full beam of blindness. And you are not the eye doctor. You are the patient, and you are blind. Repent.
Now hear Jesus: “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” (Luke 6:36) There is the whole law in one line. And there is the whole problem in one line, too. You cannot learn mercy from a merciless teacher, and you have been one. The command by itself cannot make you merciful, any more than barking “See!” at a blind man will give him back his eyes. The law shows you the plank. It will not pull it out. It tells you what a merciful man looks like and then leaves you standing there, blind, holding the very tweezers you meant to use on your brother.
But there is another Teacher. And this is the wonder of this day. When Jesus says, “Be merciful as your Father is merciful,” He is not reading you a rule out of a book He has never lived. He is the Father’s mercy, in the flesh, standing in front of you. The lesson and the Teacher are the same. He does not train you from a safe distance, shouting corrections across the room. He comes close, so close you can taste Him. He takes the plank — the whole judging, condemning, score-keeping heart of you — and He carries it up to the cross and lets it be nailed there with Him. He was judged so that you would not be judged. He was condemned so that you would not be condemned. The Teacher failed that the students would pass, He died that they would live.
So now listen to Jesus again. “Everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). Under a blind guide, that is a threat. But under this Teacher, it is a promise. Sit under Jesus, stay His disciple, and you will become like Him. Not all at once. He is in no hurry. He teaches the way He has always taught, by giving Himself away to you, over and over.
He trains you in the water of your Baptism, where He drowned the old, blind man and raised up a new one in his place who can see. This is not you turning over a new leaf or trying a little harder to be nice. This is death and resurrection. He trains you in His Word, read and preached. He trains you in Holy Absolution, when His called servant says out loud what He has decided in heaven: I forgive you all your sins. He trains you at this rail, where He puts His own Body and Blood into your mouth. You will become merciful the way you became everything else you are — by being with your Teacher until you start to look like Him.
So stop trying to graduate from Jesus’s school. You don’t need to, nor could you, rise above your Teacher. Keep your seat next to Him. And the mercy He commands, He first gives; and what He gives starts to find its way out of you. Toward the spouse you had already half-written off. Toward the neighbor you sorted into the failed category years ago. Toward the brother whose speck you can finally see clearly, now that the plank is gone. That mercy looks at friend and enemy with the same eyes, because that is how your Father looks at you. It is His mercy, His own mercy, finding its way through you. Fruit on the branch, branch bound to the vine.
A disciple is not above his teacher. Thank God for that! You have a Teacher who is mercy itself, and He has given you His word that everyone perfectly trained will be like Him. Sit at His feet. Listen to Him. And you’ll inevitably become like Him. He is not finished with you yet.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guards your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin